5 Components To A Winning Sales Demo

The key to any sales demo is to get prospective buyers to understand the value your product or service will provide.  Once they can identify, observe, and witness the value, they are much more likely to proceed down the sales cycle without wasting any time.  This translates into accelerated deal cycles, higher win rates, increased annual account value, and happier customers who spend less time inside the buyer journey. 

Component 1:  Understanding what's up with their business

Don't lead the demo with your product or offering. Instead, lay out the business problems, insights, and observations.  The prospect will spend some time, usually 5 to 15 minutes, bringing up the topics that will provide us with context. This is not a time for sellers and SE's to speak too much but instead, suggest the pains and issues they are experiencing while waiting for them to confirm and elaborate. 

Agitating the problem enables the seller to orchestrate the demo so:

• Everyone understands why sticking with the status quo is hurting the potential customer

• What's at risk is clear. The current pain and current unrealized benefits are laid out.

• It hits home for the prospect and gets interest to explode

Showcasing a product and what it can do without explaining the context makes it appear as a solution no one asked for.  Prospects are more inclined to spend money on solutions that relieve or reduce pain, not solutions that provide added benefits. 

A deal is more likely to be lost due to prospects choosing to stick with the status quo than to a competitor solution.  The goal is to get the prospect to understand that they are willingly incurring losses by sticking to the status quo.  The sales pitch should be spun in a way that reflects this perspective.  More people are okay with passing up benefits than knowingly taking losses for an indefinite amount of time.  

Change your pitch in the following manner to adjust for this mindset shift:

Taking the product on a grand tour of every feature and function without assembling any context will end up putting prospects to sleep.  A self driving car is not appealing if you don't drive anywhere to begin with.  We don't want to sabotage the demo from the start in this manner.

Component 2:  Flip the demo

We always want to save the best for last.  The grand finale, the final performance, the closing act to hammer it home.  

But when it comes to a software sales demo, it's not ideal to save the big and important points for the end.  The prospects attention might be dwindling at that point in the call.  The worst scenario is to present a bunch of info that's irrelevant to their problem to bore them and then follow through with what's applicable at the very end.  

It's best to align all of the intended talking points with the customers clearly defined paint points.  Gaining their attention at the start of the call instantly builds interest and sets the tone for a more successful call as it plays out from there. Navigating an interface that a seller is familiar with on a call can be overwhelming for a prospect who has never seen it before.  It helps to tie each aspect of the demo to a pain point the prospect is dealing with.  

As a seller, there is more clarity in showing the how / why / when the buyers would use the product.  

Specific and clear targets are better than a shallow tour of everything in the product suite. 

Component 3:  Provide proof and evidence

Most sales slide decks have a slide or two that shows all of the big logos the product was successful with.  The thinking is that buyers will be impressed and that it emphasizes authority in the space.  

If it was able to help Microsoft reduce marketing spend, it must be a great solution for me, of course? 

The correct answer is, no. Most customers are thinking "Well, we are not Microsoft.  We don't have the same presence, size, and experience in our market."

Prospective buyers need to feel like they belong to the same profile and caliber as the companies you are telling success stories about.  The social proof can miss the mark and actually push future customers further away.  

To avoid having this problem, its ideal to have references match the prospect in the three S's.  These are size, scope, and sector.

Component 4:  Solve the one and only problem

One of the worst things that can happen when ending a demo with a prospect is they say something like - "This is really cool and all, but this looks like a Rolls Royce with all these features and gadgets.  We are looking for something that's more like a super efficient Honda."

This is because less is more when it comes to selling.  Keep this as simple as possible and show them how your solution solves their specific problem.  When sales reps want to "give them a grand tour of the whole suite" or "walk them through all of the features to show them how capable it is", Prospects can get lost, lose interest, and feel like they would be paying for things they don't need.  

Solve the top one or two problems and go from there.

Component 5:  Provide clear next steps

Once the prospect is engaged with what you are offering, its crucial to lock in the next steps.  Clients are more likely to accept a meeting invite after verbally agreeing to one over a call than getting the invite in an email afterwards.  Whether its a discovery call, product demo, contract discussion, or some other interaction, setting next steps at the end of any communication is crucial to moving the deal along.  

I like to be specific to make it easier for the prospect to accept.  By suggesting specific date and time blocks, it reduces the cognitive effort required of them to get the event on the calendar.  Try and obtain a verbal agreement accepting the next step and then proceed to getting it booked.  Sales cycles are far less likely to get hung up and lose weeks of momentum when this is executed properly.